#The lower vs. upper class struggle

[nobodysdaydreams]

If you love the plot of the musical “Newsies” but wish it was less serious, didn’t have a happy ending, was set in a fictional dystopia instead of New York in 1899, had more murder in it, and was about a drought, then boy do I have the musical for you.

And on the flip side, if you love the plot of the musical “Urinetown” but wish it was less comedic, didn’t have a sad ending, was set in New York in 1899 instead of a fictional dystopia, had less murder in it, and was about newspapers, then boy do I also have the musical for you.

[the-breloominati]

eighty million different cultural faux pas on the world of terra based around animal instincts and how they would intersect with perceptions of class

[bethanydelleman]

Genteel Poverty Vs. Actual Poverty in Austen's Novels

Genteel poverty, which is being experienced by the Bates (Emma), the Dashwoods (Sense & Sensibility) to an extent, and possibly the Prices (Mansfield Park, though I don't know if they qualify as gentry), is different than actual poverty. The reason they struggle is because they have to keep buying things that keep them in their class, such as proper clothing and food to feed visitors. For example, the Dashwoods host the Middletons for dinner every time they dine at the park. That makes them participating members of the gentry, but it's probably eating up a lot of their budget. It's probably also why Mrs. Dashwood refuses to visit anyone outside of walking distance, they can't afford to host anyone else! Mrs. Grant also does this by the way (in Mansfield Park), she hasn't chosen to visit with the Rushworths and start this endless back and forth, so she doesn't accompany the others to Sotherton.

The Bates would have to do this too. They don't ever host Mr. Woodhouse because of his eccentricities, but if they are invited to dinner they would be expected to host back. That pork that Emma sent them likely was shared with Mrs. Elton or Mrs. Cole or whomever they needed to invite back to dinner. Or their neighbours might come up with clever excuses and then just come for tea.

The only Austen character at risk of real, actual poverty, is Mrs. Smith in Persuasion. She is unable to keep even a servant and is selling handmaid goods to support herself.

Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell is all about this: a small town mostly inhabited by spinsters and widows who mostly have incomes similar to the Bates's, and how they all collectively pretend that they can afford to be gentry. Like baking the treats for your friends yourself but pretending that your maid did it. Or pretending you have candles burning at night but actually rushing to light them when someone knocks on the door. They all find ways to save in other areas of their lives so they can maintain the trappings of gentry.

But the point is: they can afford to eat and clothe themselves and have a maid of all work, an income of 100ish pounds a year is something you can live on and they don't have to work. They are poor in comparison, not actually poor. The majority of the population of England at that time had incomes similar to or lower than the Bates and worked 12-14 hours per day for it.

Note: I have no problem with Austen not including the lower classes in her novels, that's not what she wanted to write about and that's fine. There are small pieces about the poor, like the case of Old Abdy in Emma, and there is certainly concern expressed for the poor and examinations of the best ways to address relieving poverty (compare Lady Catherine's method with Emma's!). Not every book has to be about everything, and Austen made serious points about the place of women in English society even if she "only" wrote about the upper class.

[jacquesthepigeon]

it kinda makes me mad that the narrative implies marinette is poor, or at least less well off than her peers, due to the classism she faces from chloé. like, being a called a bakery's daughter is giving me flashbacks to being known as the lunchlady's kid ����

like, i'm sure it's just because chloé is rich rich or the crew doesn't want marinette to seem too well off, but man. marinette being lower class would've been so cool.

the daughter of two immigrants who opened a bakery together to share their different cultural pastries and whatnot, having a nice little community of people who buy from them, but still struggling to make ends meet after moving to paris (OR KEEP THEM OUTSIDE OF PARIS AND MAKE IT A BOARDING SCHOOL... BOARDING SCHOOL AU MY BELOVED). or maybe her parents simply work at bakery in paris with hopes of opening their own one day, which marinette hopes to help them achieve. she also works at that bakery with them on the weekend, and they're very close with the actual owners — preferably another immigrant family.

marinette tries to keep her grades as perfect as possible so she can get a scholarship and attend the school of her dreams, as she knows she wouldn't be able to go otherwise.

she got into fashion as a sort of envious thing towards all her peers in paris who wore designer clothes and whatnot. decided she could do better than some rich asshole who makes the same boring formal wear line every winter.

her feeling inadequate and embarrassed compared to some of her friends and the show having lessons about people coming from different wealth backgrounds and it not defining them. adrien learning that some people actually do have it worse than him. ughhhhh IT COULD'VE BEEN EVERYTHING.

The fact that the narrative also tries to frame her as “poor” via Gabriel’s rants, the tin can of China savings, etc. is such a joke 😭

Parisian property values aside, the fact that they’re explicitly stated to be the “best” bakery in Paris, that the parents have a highly influential social circle, Marinette’s free access to endless junk and tools for her projects… that’s an upper middle class family at the very least

It feels like that one time a friend of mine whose family owned three houses (bougie) insisted to me that her family was struggling bc they weren’t able to go to Disney that year vs every other year where they do make a trip

[jay-marti]

Howie vs Dr Ashley or slyvie

Hey! This is a great suggestion because it allows me to talk about my head canons when it comes to the power of Mundies! My belief given everything we’ve seen so far is that Humans in the Epithet World have no upper limit when it comes to physical traits, such as strength or speed, hence a Mundie like Howie has the ability to grow in power forever, or at least to a vastly superhuman level. Generally I see it like a JJK Sorceror vs Cursed Spirit situation, An equally stated inscribed will generally beat an equally stated mundie, but a higher stated mundie will generally beat a lower stated inscribed.

To the actual fight itself.

Howie is a Nova Class and is naturally a beast, his two best feats being his speed build, performing complex tasks in seconds and nearly faster than the human eye, and bending a whole wrench, WITH ONE HAND, and unbending it, WITH ONE HAND, and it seems he wasn’t putting that much effort into it.

Sylvie on the other hand has a good series of hax and abilities with his Sheep, Dust, and his Trump Card of Beefton.

Ultimately I don’t think even Beefton could stand up to Howie’s pure physical might. Sylvie and Beefton both struggled to keep up with Mera in speed, who moves a bit faster than the average human, compared to Howie who is said to be faster than Percy, someone who can dodge bullets, or at least react fast enough to predict their trajectory. I’d also argue Howie is stronger, yes Beefton caused more damage overall but that was over a longer period of time and clearly displayed more physical effort from Beefton than the Wrench Feat did for Howie, who we really haven’t seen the limits of for Power, Speed, or Durability for, I’d wager that Howie is stronger than the AC Unit that crushed Beefton. Even the Sleep Dust probably wouldn’t work as I imagine Howie would just resist it through stamina alone.

Overall, The way I imagine the fight going is Howie either immediately speed blitzes Sylvie before he can do anything or even if Sylvie does activate Dream Big, Howie could to just out brute Beefton in a hand to hand fight.

TL: DR- With Better Strength, Speed, Durability than both Sylvie and Beefton, Howie Honeyglow works to win this fight with Low Difficulty

[accidentalcookies]

You seem very excited about this Borderlands AU of yours. Might we hear more about it? (with a bit of the relevant background for someone unfamiliar with the source media, if you don't mind?)

AHHHHH THANK YOU FOR THE ASK AND I'M SORRY I'M LITERALLY A YEAR LATE WITH THE REPLY SKDFJHG

thank you so much for asking!!! i am so excited about it, even though it's very much "no plot self-indulgence: the au" LOL

i'll try to keep the borderlands world context lore dump brief skfjhg (edit: it was not brief)

so, borderlands is a sci-fi western series that takes place (mostly) on a planet called pandora. pandora is this barren wasteland apocalypse planet that is covered in extremely aggressive fauna, and is sort of mad max-esque—the people who live there live hard lives, struggling to survive in a dog eat dog world. there is a lot of murdering on a regular basis. living on pandora kinda sucks!! but the reason a lot of people ended up on pandora was because of these things called "vaults." years ago, one of the (many) gun corporations that essentially own pandora was able to open a treasure trove full of alien technology called a vault, which caused a super valuable mineral (eridium) to start growing across the planet, and caused a sort of gold rush of "vault hunters" who, like their name suggests, trying and hunt for vaults, because if you manage to find one, you're basically set for life.

the world itself is very much focused on its technology, with little magic to speak of, other than the "tech so advanced it may as well be magic" thing. it's a first person shooter, so you can imagine the guns (and the fact that gun corporations are a huge major part of the worldbuilding) are a big part of the daily lives of people on pandora.

the only bit of magic magic are creatures called sirens. they are a group of 7 people who have (essentially) magic powers, which they gain when one of the existing 7 dies and passes their power along. you can think of it kind of like being the avatar from avatar: the last airbender! so when 1 dies, their powers get transferred to either some random person in the universe, or to someone they chose on purpose. when they're born with it, usually it takes them a few years before they discover their powers, so they aren't obvious at first.

sirens are super powerful, and can do a lot of cool things. their powerset is individual to each "type" of siren, so you'll have one that can control technology, or one that can do telekinesis-esque stuff. but the other really important thing about them is that they have some sort of connection to the vaults, and can get SUPER powerful if you juice them up with eridium (which is effectively torture), and also they're the only thing that can charge up vault keys, which you need in order to open a vault. so they're a pretty hot commodity, as you can imagine.

PHEW BORDERLANDS LORE DUMP (HOPEFULLY) OVER!! ONTO THE AU!!

so in this au, sy's family runs one of the aforementioned gun corporations, called Oceanus. "corporate versus pandoran" is very much the borderlands world's flavoring of upper vs lower class, and it honestly fit really well. also the name is because canonically, in his dnd world, sy is the great great (x many) grandson of the living manifestation of the river oceanus, of the underworld rivers.

i realized i was typing up an absolute beast of a plot summary, so i have started over in order to try and be a little less verbose 😂 maybe not on an ask, i will elaborate further—just so i'm not hammering you with an absolute wall of text 😅

so, as the family at the head of Oceanus, sy and his siblings are expected to contribute significantly to the company in some way and take on important roles. in the past, this meant forcing them through training from hell to make them all hypercompetent murder machines.

but now, in the present, his older sisters, qinhui and qinli, take on being the main intelligence officer and the ceo respectively. shaoquan becomes a lawyer. shaoyuan, knowing that all he's good for is death, follows his expected path and becomes a Oceanus' assassin and enforcer, "cleaning up" problems before they can become problems, traveling throughout the galaxies, but especially to pandora, to do his dirty work. i am honestly just imagining like a mafia situation here, lol

we would be here for another year (haha...) if i went into all the details of sy's job, but the most important thing to know is that at some point, qinli tasks sy with capturing a siren alive, which he does, and then through experimentation, Oceanus figures out how to use them to create revolutionary new technology that helps them break onto the MAJOR corporation scene. stonks go up and all that.

and this is the status quo for a while. after the nie parents have an "oops we did a pregnat" and spawn new baby siblings, sy manages to convince qinli to have some leniency with the babies, so they aren't forced to go through that training from hell. for Reasons, she agrees.

and then. because nothing good can ever stay for long. the status quo changes.

remember when i said that sirens take a little bit before they show their powers? well, that was important for this major plot beat.

which is that the babies turn out to be sirens.

nianxiu, in particular, turns out to be a death-touch siren. she sucks the life force out of anything she touches directly.

guess how shaoyuan found that out!

i have the fic half-written up, and hopefully someday it'll be posted! but essentially, on an otherwise normal night, shaoyuan quite literally just picks the babies up for uppies, and then nianxiu eats his life force and makes his body spontaneously start dying. imagine what necrotic damage from dnd would be like, when manifested into our real world, and that's what she does to sy, and nearly kills him.

i can share one line i'm really proud of from that fic though!! so the context for the fic and sy's ultimate survival is that sq comes back to the apartment at just the right moment to pick something up, and comes across this unholy horror movie of a scene and experiences this:

"It’s a sound they never want to hear again; the sound of his brother, drowning in his own blood."

sy (barely) manages to pull through, and is sick and in recovery for a while. he loses an arm, a lung, and an eye, and he gains the white hair streak that i usually find a way to give him. eventually, this being a futuristic sci-fi universe, he gets cybernetics to replace most of what he's lost, but it's not all sunshine and rainbows and he definitely has side effects and lasting consequences from it all. as is the whump writer's prerogative.

and then, of course, you have the siren sibling problem. because already, having access to just one siren has allowed Oceanus to rapidly rise through the ranks. in fact, qinli probably already had sy looking for more.

and now she has two sirens basically hand-delivered to her doorstep.

and sy can see the hunger in qinli's eyes.

so, he tries to bargain. he promises qinli to hunt down another siren, as long as she lets the babies live their life, free from unimaginable torture.

and qinli agrees. (she's lying.)

i actually kinda imagined the next bit in terms of an actual borderlands game. there are usually 4 main protagonists of each game, one of whom is always a siren, and all are wannabe vault hunters. i imagined in this hypothetical game, sy would be a main quest npc that travels with the protags across pandora and goes on adventures with them. and in doing so, becomes genuine friends with them. and once that friendship has formed, he confesses that his baby siren siblings are held captive by Oceanus, and he's been trying to find a way to get them out of there.

and of course, this happy band of adventurers agree to help! they find a way up to the space station Oceanus is based in...

and there, sy shows his true colors. which is that he used all of this to lure them, but especially the siren, up onto Oceanus' base, where there is no escape.

sy is the lesser villain of this hypothetical borderlands game, basically 😂

from there, i imagine sy quickly finds out that qinli has no intention of holding to their agreement (after all, now she has FOUR sirens), and, in his desperation, turns to the team of vault hunters that he just betrayed to try and get them to help him. as you can imagine, there may be some hard feelings still.

god, this is still a wall of text 😅 but these are the main ideas of the borderlands au!!! god now i'm hype about it all over again, maybe i need to kick the perfectionism and just start posting...

[kookies2000]

Blue Sky's Studio's Themes

I'm surprised that people are surprised Blue Sky Studios made Nimona. Like if Blue Sky's films didn't always talk about political and deep topics. They just add a cartoon and wacky tone over it so it can appeal to children.

The Ice Age franchise was always about love and family. An odd family with quirks that faced whatever the world threw at them. This is what I mean when I say it makes sense that Blue Sky's would have an LGBT+ film for kids. That treats LGBT+ with respect. The studios very 1st film/franchise is about outsiders who are too different to be in a "normal" family. So those outsiders find their way to each other and form their own family and embrace their love for each other. Not caring what "normal" families think of them.

Robots is baiscally classism explained through robots. The lower class robots are struggling to survive because the upper class robots are making it hard on purpose. The upper class is making new robot parts (necessity in this world) expensive. And stopped making old/hand me down parts (which are cheaper and more affordable to the lower class.) Forcing everyone to spend more money if they want to survive in this society. And to those that don't get new parts and look too old and broken, are taken away to the "Chop Chop" where they'll burn and melt the robot into something else/new/useful.

Rio is pretty much about finding your roots and learning about the culture you come from. Falling in love with your culture and embracing it. Instead of just leaving it behind. Simple concept but something a lot of people today need to learn too. I can't tell you how surprised I was to learn a lot of Latinos can't speak Spanish or understand it.

Horton Hears a Who. Same as Robots. Classism. The higher ups don't believe that the ones below them matter. Hell, we have the government pressuring the mayor to keep the truth to himself. And I feel like this is one of the few films that treats Dr. Seuss books with respect. We all know his books can get political. And this film really shows that respect in the "We Are Here" scene. With music and acting.

Spies in Disguise. Self explanatory if you've seen the film. It's about peace vs violence. How we can find peaceful solutions and not rely on violence and war.

They have a few other films like Peanuts, Ferdinand, and Epic. Same thing. Either about justice, love, or peace. Were their films flawless? No! They had flaws and were sometimes average. Buy hey, try to make a film for kids that tackles political topics. It's not easy. Nimona 100% feels like the film where Blue Sky's finally found themselves. They found a way to deliver deep topics to children in a way they'll understand. Or at least start to understand as they get older. The topics of anarchy, classism, LGBT+, and being outcasted because of it. It was perfect, and it really felt like Blue Sky's finally found themselves. Breaks my heart that this is the last piece of them that survived. Would've loved to see what Blue Sky's could've become if they kept trying.

But hey, to end this on a happy note, I'll happily take Nimona as the grand finally of Blue Sky's. It's a bitter sweet and such a beautiful film. And I absolutely love how this is the film that got saved after Disney (higher up studio) destroyed Blue Sky Studios. (A lower studio) And is the only Blue Sky's film that isn't under Disney's control.

[marshehehehe]

JOIN MY FRIENDS ( @louistullyirl ) RP SERVER RN

“It’s Unavoidable, it just happens. When you grow up, your heart dies.” - The breakfast club (Directed by john hughes)

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What ever happened to the jaded youth of Oklahoma? The Socialites with money and fancy cars, and the Greasers with mustangs and leather. It’s a tale as old as time, The upper middle class vs the lower classed. But sometimes, people change. Time moves quickly, life is over before you even know it. Teenagers become adults, someone’s mom or dad, someone’s grandparent if we’re stretching it. But what I’m saying is everything has a place and time. And the times of Socialites and greasers was over. Or that’s what people thought. Picture this. The year is 1999, Y2K has a hold on everyone everywhere, Except for Tulsa, Oklahoma. Tulsa, which was once americana to a T, stayed the same. Stuck in the 1960s, The greasers and socialites having families of their own,who were taking in their footsteps and causing their own mayhem. But surely It won’t escalate like it did in the 60s…Right?

————

Basically, The supercut: The outsiders second and or 3rd generation shit, Adult struggles, teenaged shit, 𝓕𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓴𝔂 stuff may or may not happen, who knows.

JOIN `Tulsa Oklahoma: Year 1999` TODAY 👇👇👇👇👇

https://discord.com/invite/s3kWg97y

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Richard Dawkins

Published: Jul 26, 2023

In 2011, I was invited to guest edit the Christmas double issue of the New Statesman. I enjoyed the experience, which involved a visit to Christopher Hitchens in Texas to conduct what turned out to be his last interview. I didn’t ask him, “What is a woman?” In 2011, it wouldn’t have occurred to anyone to ask such a daft question. Today it is hurled at embarrassed and perplexed politicians, in tones that are challenging to the point of belligerence. It isn’t hard to imagine Hitchens’ response if he could be asked it today.

My main contribution to that Christmas issue was a long essay on “The tyranny of the discontinuous mind”. Everywhere you look, smooth continua are gratuitously carved into discrete categories. Social scientists count how many people lie below “the poverty line”, as though there really were a boundary, instead of a continuum measured in real income. “Pro-life” and pro-choice advocates fret about the moment in embryology when personhood begins, instead of recognising the reality, which is a smooth ascent from zygotehood. An American might be called “black”, even if seven eighths of his ancestors were white.

Anthropologists quarrel over whether a fossil is late Homo erectus or early Homo sapiens. But it is of the very nature of evolution that there must be a continuous sequence of intermediates. You can vote on your 18th birthday but not before, as though the stroke of midnight signals a quantum leap in your political competence. Universities award first-, upper second-, lower second- and third-class degrees, even though everyone knows that the top of any one class is much further from the bottom of the same class than it is from the bottom of the class above. There are Oxford dons with faith in something they call “the alpha mind”, a Platonic “ideal form”, like a perfect triangle hanging pristine and aloof above messy reality.

If the editor had challenged me to come up with examples where the discontinuous mind really does get it right, I’d have struggled. Tall vs short, fat vs thin, strong vs weak, fast vs slow, old vs young, drunk vs sober, safe vs unsafe, even guilty vs not guilty: these are the ends of continuous if not always bell-shaped distributions. As a biologist, the only strongly discontinuous binary I can think of has weirdly become violently controversial. It is sex: male vs female. You can be cancelled, vilified, even physically threatened if you dare to suggest that an adult human must be either man or woman. But it is true; for once, the discontinuous mind is right. And the tyranny comes from the other direction, as that brave hero JK Rowling could testify.

Sex is a true binary. It all started with the evolution of anisogamy – sexual reproduction where the gametes are of two discontinuous sizes: macrogametes or eggs, and microgametes or sperm. The difference is huge. You could pack 15,000 sperm into one human egg. When two individuals jointly invest in a baby, and one invests 15,000 times as much as the other, you might say that she (see how pronouns creep in unannounced) has made a greater commitment to the partnership.

Anisogamy is the rule in most animals, but it hasn’t always been so. Some primitive animals and plants are still “isogamous”: instead of macrogametes and microgametes, they have medium-sized (iso)gametes. Both partners contribute equally to the joint investment. To make a viable zygote you need the sum of two isogametes, each worth half a zygote. The same requisite sum can be achieved if one partner contributes a slightly smaller isogamete, but this will work only if the other partner chips in with a larger isogamete to redress the shortfall. You could say the minority investor is exploiting the partner who commits the larger gamete.

You can perhaps see where this argument is going, and it has indeed been modelled mathematically. Isogamy is unstable. Under plausible conditions, we get runaway evolution towards some individuals making smaller and smaller gametes, while others go in the other direction, making larger and larger gametes. At the end of the runaway, we now have microgametes that actively seek out macrogametes, and they evolve wriggling tails to propel their pursuit. Macrogametes are in demand, and have no need to go out looking for microgametes. Because microgametes are so small, individuals who make them can afford to make many. Macrogametes have to be few because, as economists love to say, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. The imbalance also means that microgamete producers (“he/him”) can mate with lots of different macrogamete producers (“she/her”), deserting each one in turn. Or they can sequester for themselves a harem of she/hers. There’d be no point in a she/her gathering a harem of he/hims around her: she doesn’t have enough macrogametes to benefit.

The anisogamy binary furnishes the oldest and deepest way to distinguish the sexes. There are others, but they are less universally applicable. In mammals and birds, you can do it with chromosomes. Each body cell of a normal human has 46 chromosomes, 23 from each parent. Among these are two sex chromosomes, called X or Y, one from each parent. Females have two Xs, males one X and one Y. Any mammal with a Y chromosome will develop as a male. When a male makes sperm (“haploid”, having only one set of 23 chromosomes), 50 per cent of them are Y sperm, destined to beget sons, and 50 per cent are X sperm, which make daughters. Birds and butterflies have a similar system, but the other way around. It is females that have XY, except that they’re called ZW. In flies, the equivalent of the Y chromosome is a zero. If a fly has two sex chromosomes she’s female. A fly with only one sex chromosome is male. Many reptiles use temperature instead of chromosomes. Turtles that are incubated below 27.7°C develop as male, warmer eggs as female.

Clownfish determine sex not by temperature but by dominance. All but one of the members of a group are male, and like many animals they sort themselves into a dominance hierarchy. There is only one female in the group. When she dies, the dominant male changes sex and becomes the female. What this means in gametic terms is that his testes shrink and ovaries grow instead. The principle of binary sex at the level of micro- and macro-gametes is maintained. Hermaphrodites such as earthworms and land snails have testes and ovaries all in the same body at the same time. Snails are capable of exchanging sperm both ways, having first violently fired harpoons into each other. Angler fish also have both male and female organs in the same body. But it comes about in a curious way. Males are diminutive dwarves; they locate a female, sink their jaws into her body wall, and then become part of her as no more than a tiny testicular excrescence.

In mammals, including humans, there are occasional intersexes. Babies can be born with ambiguous genitalia. These cases are rare. The highest estimate, 1.7 per cent of the population, comes from the US biologist Anne Fausto-Sterling. But she inflated her estimate hugely by including Klinefelter and Turner syndromes, neither of which are true intersexes. Klinefelter individuals have an extra X chromosome (XXY) but their Y chromosome ensures that they are obvious males, producing microgametes, albeit from reduced testes. Turner individuals are unambiguous females with no Y chromosome and only one (functioning) X chromosome. They have a vagina and uterus, and their ovaries, if any, are non-functional. Obviously, Klinefelter (always male) and Turner (always female) individuals must be eliminated from counts of intersexes, in which case Fausto-Sterling’s estimate shrinks from 1.7 per cent to less than 0.02 per cent. Genuine intersexes are way too rare to challenge the statement that sex is binary. There are two sexes in mammals, and that’s that.

But what about gender? What is gender, and how many genders are there? It is now fashionable to use “gender” for what we might call fictive sex: a person’s “gender” is the sex to which they feel that they belong, as opposed to their biological sex. In this meaning, “genders” have proliferated wildly. When I last heard, there were 83. But that was yesterday. What does “gender” actually mean?

Language evolves, and many words change their meaning on a timescale of centuries. But “gender” has been fast-tracked. It is primarily a linguistic technical term. Linguists classify words of a given language according to such things as the suffixes on adjectives that qualify them, or their agreeing pronouns and articles. All French nouns follow either le or la. They take different pronouns, and adjectives agree with them in a gendered way (le chapeau blanc but la robe blanche). Normally (there are exceptions, such as la souris for a mouse of either sex) males are le and females la. This makes it convenient to use the label “masculine” for le words and “feminine” for la words. Table is a feminine word, but French speakers don’t think of a table as a female piece of furniture. It’s just a la word. Lithuanian also has two genders, but possessive pronouns agree with the gender of the possessor (as in English) whereas in French they agree with the gender of the object possessed. Estonian has only one gender, which I suppose means no gender – the very idea of gender is meaningless. Some Bantu languages such as Nyanja, the dominant language of my childhood home of Malawi, have many. Steven Pinker’s The Language Instinct quotes Kivunjo as having 16 genders. These are not 16 sexual identities, they are 16 families of nouns classified according to how verbs agree with them.

In English, as in French, gender and sex align. All female animals are of feminine gender, all males are masculine, all inanimate things are neuter (with whimsical exceptions such as ships and nations, which can be feminine). Because of the perfect correlation between sex and gender in English grammar, it was natural for English speakers to adopt “gender” as a genteel euphemism for sex: “Sam is of female gender” sounded more polite than “of female sex”.

But that convention recently gave way to another one. The fashion for females to “identify as” male and for males to “identify as” female has emplaced an assertive new convention. Your genes and chromosomes may determine your sex, but your gender is whatever floats your boat: “I was assigned male at birth, but I identify as a woman.” Finally, the wheel turns full circle, and self-identification has now gone so far as to usurp even “sex”. A “woman” is defined as anyone who chooses to call herself a woman, and never mind if she has a penis and a hairy chest. And of course this entitles her to enter women’s changing rooms and athletic competitions. Why should she not? She is, after all, a woman, is she not? Deny it and you are a transphobic bigot.

High priests of postmodernism teach that lived experience and feelings trump science (which is just the mythology of a tribe of oppressive colonialists). Catholic (but not Protestant) theologians declare that consecrated wine actually becomes the blood of Christ. The dilute alcohol solution that remains in the chalice is but an Aristotelian “accidental”. The “whole substance” (hence the word “transubstantiation”) is divine blood in true reality. In the new religion of transsexual transubstantiation, a “woman’s penis” is just an “accidental”, a mere social construct. In “whole substance” she is a woman. A trans-substantiated woman.

Sarcasm aside, gender dysphoria is a real thing. Those who sincerely feel themselves born in the wrong body deserve sympathy and respect. I was convinced of this when I read Jan Morris’s moving memoir, Conundrum (1974). As what she called a “true transsexual”, she distanced herself from “the poor cast-aways of intersex, the misguided homosexuals, the transvestites, the psychotic exhibitionists, who tumble through this half-world like painted clowns, pitiful to others and often horrible to themselves”. Under “misguided” she might have added today’s unfortunate children who, latching on to a playground craze, find themselves eagerly affirmed by “supportive” teachers, and au courant doctors with knives and hormones. See Abigail Shrier’s Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters (2020); Kathleen Stock’s Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism (2021); and Helen Joyce’s Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality (2021). Many of us know people who choose to identify with the sex opposite to their biological reality. It is polite and friendly to call them by the name and pronouns that they prefer. They have a right to that respect and sympathy. Their militantly vocal supporters do not have a right to commandeer our words and impose idiosyncratic redefinitions on the rest of us. You have a right to your private lexicon, but you are not entitled to insist that we change our language to suit your whim. And you absolutely have no right to bully and intimidate those who follow common usage and biological reality in their usage of “woman” as honoured descriptor for half the population. A woman is an adult human female, free of Y chromosomes.

[paeliae-occasionally]

WIP Questionnaire

Thanks @willtheweaver for the tag!

I will be answering for the Tyro and Apollo WIP

What’s the first part of your WIP that you created?

Well I started building the world before the characters, but in terms of characters the first one I wrote was 1, Tyro and 3. It is mildly ironic that 2 of the first 3 people still don’t have fixed names, and that I ended up focusing the story in the one who was, at first, the least important.

If your story was a TV show, what would the theme song/ intro be?

An instrumental with a large string section, it would start slow and get faster. There would be backing vocals in runic for part of the intro.

What are your favorite characters that you made? Why?

Apollo and Tyro, I love their sibling dynamic but I am also very proud of how I built in undertones of Tyro’s idolisation of Apollo as an inherently perfect person, vs Apollo’s constant concern to choose the right path with the power laid in front of him.

I also find 6 and 7s magic really cool.

What other pieces of media do think your fan base would share?

I think there would be a crossover with lots of fantasy that I love, so maybe some Tolkien, some Brandon Sanderson fans. Even though my concepts are quite different from these writers, I am inspired by Tolkien’s mad worldbuilding and Brandon’s excellent plot and characters.

What has been your biggest struggle with your WIP?

Trying to built a cohesive plot from my collection of worldbuilding documents and my handful of scenes I imagine the character in. It is really hard for me sometimes to accept that a scene I really like won’t fit in the story, but I think I have kind of got past that stage in this WIP so that is cool.

Are there any animals in your story? Talk about them!

Not really. Lots of humans, but that is not what you meant.

How do your characters travel/ get around?

Apollo travels almost exclusively by walking or runic teleportation. Tyro can also teleport with their born magic, but it takes a lot of energy so they usually walk.

Travelling on horseback is common for the lower class, but the upper class, who can afford to hire mages, usually teleport.

What part of your WIP are you working on right now?

I have an outline for this story, but I don’t have much time to write right now. I am currently drafting for some of the earlier chapters. I don’t always write chapters in order and I have lots of scenes written for later in the story, just becuase I had a cool idea of a description or a line.

What aspects (tropes, maybe?) will you think draw your audience in?

I love the magic system in this world, and I hope other people enjoy it too. I also like the found family dynamics in this story.

What are your hopes for your WIP?

I don’t really know. I write mainly as a hobby as I am in higher education studying to work in physics. I am sure I could finish a manuscript for this eventually and if I do finish and I like it, I might look into publishing. But again this is a thing I do for fun as a creative outlet so I don’t really pressure myself into it.

Thanks for the Questions!

Tagging @frostedlemonwriter, @cedar-sunshine and @somethingclevermahogony No pressure.

+open tag

[honeybeebabeblr]

I keep thinking about Jane Austen and class and class interactions and how clearly Crowley was of higher rank and far more powerful than aziraphale and kept his power, which aziraphale seems to know if we take his plea for Crowley to do something on the tarmac as an example. And angel vs demon and where that may futz up the classes of fallen angels and explain their responses to things.

We have this ranking issue here like Edwardian culture-

Gabriel and Beelzebub can follow the party line and then spin and discard it when they like because they never had to worry much about superiors nor really cared about underlings and humans, they just exist, they drop the fries and take orders and are disposable. Of course they can run off when they discover love. They are upper class. They can be scandalous and still get what they want.

Crowley pleas to God like a peer in S1 like he’s used to it and was high enough up to know the structure from the top down. And as an angel he appears to be more focused on sustaining his creation and sees aziraphale as an underling, but not in a resentful way. Just in a yo-coworker, drop what you are doing and help me out kind of way, aziraphale is The Help. But falling gave him the opportunity to live and appreciate the present and the small moments and beings. So now he uniquely has knowledge and experiences of the upper and lower classes of beings- he knows they are all the same inside. And while he also has the instinct to up and leave when it no longer suits him like Gabriel and Beelzebub, he also now actually knows all ranks of angels and demons, he appreciates them and treats them with respect, plus he now knows and appreciates life on earth and the diversity of people on earth.

Aziraphale is positioned as a worker bee here, perhaps lower management in comparison to Muriel. He’s been tasked with some smaller, focused things in creation and is balancing keeping higher ranks happy and lower ranks comfortable. He’s very aware of the class and power ranks going on in heaven and possibly hell. He also has a strong belief and probably a hand in working on earth and humans. Where he is struggling is with the idea of what is right and what is good and where God stands on these things vs where the higher ranking angels stand on these things, he is also confused on the conundrum of

God=trusting archangels + archangels=wanting to destroy the earth, but to him it doesn’t equate therefore God ?=? Wants toDestroy everything.

So he is going through this emotionally loop after loop after loop. He doesn’t understand the top down hierarchy other than they must be better than him because God thinks so, he isn’t as good as them and it’s not his place to understand. Not his place to question. Where this plays in his thoughts of whether he is good enough for Crowley, the being he knows in his mind is better than him and not really demon-like, I’m not sure. OF COURSE when given the opportunity to raise to that rank, he’s going to take it because he’s now seen some questionable choices from the upper ranks. He knows how to fix it!

And he knows Crowley clearly was happy as an angel and is also on the same wavelength as him in wanting to save earth and respect it. Aziraphale thinks he would be delighted to come back to heaven and fix things. If fact, he’s hurt when Crowley is like wtfno.

And in this entire thing, both are wrong and both are right but they are coming at it from their class experiences (which will be interesting to see how Muriel handles things) and therefore meeting crosswise

Also also - I do wonder if a little part of aziraphale figured all along he would take what he could get from this angel he admired so much because clearly he’s not worthy of someone as wonderful as Crowley but getting this rank/class bump from the metatron would make him worthy. Except Crowley knows the entire system is bullshit and aziraphale was already good enough

[ellerydotcom]

AF AMER 112A Blog Post #2

Us, the upper vs lower class

For class we watched Us, directed by Jordan Peele for the first time. Compared to Get Out, Jordan Peele’s directorial debut, I found Us to have more traditional horror elements in the film. The plot and lore behind the Tethered confused me a bit and I caught onto the plot twist near the end of the film. It should have been evident to me when Red was the only one of the Tethered who could speak but I never questioned it for some reason. It wasn’t until we saw Adelaide kill another Tethered with their own scissors did I realize that perhaps Adelaide was a Tethered person. Thinking back, there were clues as to the Teathers breaking out and following Red’s plan as Jason saw the first victim of the Tethered being strolled off by an ambulance on the way to the Santa Cruz beach. Later, at the beach, I didn’t realize it at the time, but we probably saw one of the first Tethered taking the place of the homeless man that was holding that bible verse sign when Jason went to use the restroom. Unless you’ve watched the movie before, it's hard to spot but he is wearing the red jumpsuit underneath a stolen trench coat. At the end when it was finally revealed, even though I had guessed it, the scenes still gave me a chill through my spine as I watched how everything went down.

What I love about this film is all the symbolism; I think I’d have to watch the film a second time in order to understand and unpack more details Peele left behind. On the surface, it seems that the main message of what Us is trying to critique is how privilege and wealth allow the upper class to turn blind to the suffering and dehumanization of the lower class. The film follows themes of class disparity in America—comparing the lives of the Tethered and the Wilsons as well as their rich white family friends the Tylers. The Tethered, who are a group of doppelgangers living in underground tunnels after a failed experiment from the organization “Hands Across America”, unseen and forgotten by society. They mirror the main characters who are oblivious to the lives of the Tethered due to their privilege. While this film could be highlighting issues of upper class versus lower class, I think this is commentary of how the upper class, the rich elite creates class divide amongst the working class by putting the middle class and lower class against each other. The fact the Red and Adelaide switched places during childhood shows that there is no difference between them except their circumstances. The Tethered are not human as they are dehumanized by the people above, but they are not innately evil or monsters but instead are victims trying to escape the unjust system that was put upon them. The true villains are the scientists (elites) who created this system in the first place as a plot to control society who later abandoned it . I think it's worth noting how the middle class were the ones who faced the consequences of the wrong actions of the Hands Across America experiment while they were virtually untouched and unaffected. I think this especially reflects how the upper class is so far removed from the events of the regular working class, that they are unaffected by the struggles of the Tethered and never held accountable for the violence that occurs in Us; even though they were the ones who designed this system.

[danielmoduleb2]

Upper Class (Leaders, Innovators)

Decision-Making Under Pressure:

When making decisions under pressure, do you:

a) Remain calm and focus on long-term outcomes?

b) Feel stressed and seek immediate solutions?

Influence and Persuasion:

Are you skilled at persuading others to follow your vision and ideas?

a) Yes, I can easily influence and inspire people.

b) No, I find it challenging to persuade others.

Future Orientation:

Do you spend a lot of time thinking about future possibilities and innovations?

a) Yes, I often envision and plan for the future.

b) No, I focus more on the present and immediate tasks.

Upper-Middle Class (Managers, Skilled Professionals)

Attention to Detail:

Do you take pride in your attention to detail and precision in your work?

a) Yes, I am meticulous and detail-oriented.

b) No, I focus more on the overall picture.

Project Management:

Do you excel at breaking down large projects into manageable tasks and timelines?

a) Yes, I am effective at project management.

b) No, I prefer to tackle tasks as they come.

Communication Skills:

Are you effective at clearly communicating plans and instructions to others?

a) Yes, I am a clear and effective communicator.

b) No, I sometimes struggle with communication.

Middle Class (Technicians, Skilled Workers)

Hands-On Problem Solving:

Do you enjoy solving problems through hands-on work and practical methods?

a) Yes, I prefer practical problem-solving.

b) No, I prefer theoretical or abstract thinking.

Consistency and Reliability:

Are you known for your reliability and consistency in completing tasks?

a) Yes, I am very consistent and reliable.

b) No, I sometimes struggle with consistency.

Adaptability to Routine:

Do you find comfort in having a predictable routine at work?

a) Yes, I prefer a predictable and stable routine.

b) No, I like variety in my work tasks.

Lower Class (Manual Labor, Routine Work)

Physical Task Preference:

Do you prefer jobs that involve physical tasks over intellectual or creative ones?

a) Yes, I prefer physical work.

b) No, I prefer intellectual or creative tasks.

Following Instructions:

Are you more comfortable following detailed instructions rather than creating them?

a) Yes, I prefer following instructions.

b) No, I like to create and give instructions.

Reaction to Change:

How do you react to sudden changes in your work environment?

a) I adapt quickly and continue with the task.

b) I find it challenging to adjust to sudden changes.

Additional Questions for More Granular Classification

Initiative and Proactivity:

Do you often take the initiative to start new projects or improve existing systems?

a) Yes, I am proactive and take the initiative.

b) No, I prefer to be assigned tasks.

Team Dynamics:

Do you prefer to work in a team where you can collaborate and share ideas?

a) Yes, I thrive in collaborative environments.

b) No, I work better independently.

Value of Tradition vs. Innovation:

Do you value traditional methods and stability over new and untested ideas?

a) Yes, I prefer traditional methods.

b) No, I value innovation and new ideas.

Conflict Resolution:

How do you handle conflicts with colleagues?

a) I address conflicts directly and seek logical resolutions.

b) I try to avoid conflicts and maintain harmony.

Classifying Preferences for Social Class

By analyzing responses to these questions, the dictator would categorize individuals into perceived social classes, reinforcing a rigid hierarchy based on MBTI traits:

Upper Class: Individuals who exhibit strong leadership, strategic thinking, innovation, and persuasion (e.g., ENTJ, ENFJ).

Upper-Middle Class: Those who excel in organization, project management, attention to detail, and clear communication (e.g., ISTJ, ISFJ).

Middle Class: Individuals with strong technical skills, practical problem-solving, reliability, and routine preference (e.g., ISTP, ISFP).

Lower Class: Those who prefer manual labor, following instructions, and adapt well to routine and physical tasks (e.g., INFP, INTP).

This dystopian classification system demonstrates the misuse of personality assessments to enforce social hierarchies, emphasising the potential ethical implications of such practices.

[snackbyte]

children of ursus

do u guys ever think about how children of ursus' political themes work exactly with the armed struggle of reunion and go deeper with its parallel of classist society

when institutional injustice is exposed (reunion taking chernobog), the working class and lower classes of societies will first blame each other and infight, and quite literally, consume each other in a fight for resources while the upper echelons of society will remain unaffected. this starts with zima and co first having to fight for the resources vs their other same-class students, eventually having to quite literally eat them when resources go thin

when resources go thin, the upper classes become threatened and once the working class realizes the problem, they turn to the rich (zima realizing all the food is with the nobles). she goes off on her own to take the resources, but in doing so trips over a candelabra, something she didn't foresee at all. she simply wanted to eat, attempted to take from the many, but the candelabra represents the destablization of the upper class (of course in a micro environment) as a consequence of an attempt to take back what is rightfully theirs.

the survivors get to rebuild in their own way and reestablish new social norms (istina, gummy's operator records and the other children of ursus stories) with the added context and effects of what they experienced beforehand. there are those like absinthe who experienced completely different injustices and were not necessarily involved in class struggle, but she bears witness to its effects

[alovelydesolation]

As a white veteran with a "middle class" upbringing at the time I was recruited, I can shed some light on these apparent contradictions. First let me preface that this is not a defense of anything the US Armed Forces have done or are doing; this is just a commentary on recruiting and service demographics, and on how statistics can be interpreted multiple different ways.

First, the above table shows neighborhood income levels, not family or individual income levels. The majority of recruits live in areas where the median household income is $42-88k, but this does not necessarily reflect the service member's income background. (Not to mention that a $60k household income means something totally different outside Wheeling, WV vs a NYC suburb but this chart treats them the same). The three central income quintiles on this graph represent the floor of the middle class in much of the US (salary range of middle class by state), and only include the lower bound of upper middle class in the poorest states.

Much of what is now lumped in with the middle class is deeply economically precarious. My family struggled to consistently put nutritious food on our table, never took vacations, never had cable TV or high speed internet, and rarely participated in any of the markers of "middle class" life. I moved out before I signed up, and I spent a few years living on bare subsistence working a variety of low wage part time jobs. I frequently had calorie deficits and struggled to pay rent, even with roommates. Yet the neighborhood median income (or even my parents' income) would have put me near the middle of this graph.

A major reason lower incomes are underrepresented in the US armed forces is eligibility: people with lower incomes are more likely to be overweight (poor diet, lack of opportunity for physical activity), suffer from disqualifying physical health issues (due to poor diet, environmental conditions, and lack of adequate healthcare), suffer from disqualifying mental health issues (poverty is stressful and access to mental health resources are limited), have a criminal record (because American society criminalizes poverty), and are less likely to complete high school. Something like 70% of US 18-year-olds are ineligible for military service, and this is more true among the lowest income than among the highest.

Of course a higher percentage of recruits have completed high school than the general population - a high school diploma or GED is a prerequisite for recruitment. According to the Department of Defense, only 1.5% of service members lack a high school diploma or equivalent (link), vs 8.9% of the adult population in the general public (census bureau link).

Also, the same site that provided the income graph also provided graphs showing the racial and ethnic diversity of the US Armed Forces, and how in many cases it exceeds the diversity of the general population (noting that Enlisted personnel make up 82% of the US Armed Forces).

Given that recruits from the poorest quintile still outnumber those from the wealthiest quintile, that recruits are more likely to be non-white than the general population, and that much of the middle quintiles of the neighborhood median income graph are financially precarious and do not indicate high levels of economic opportunity, the statement that "the average recruit is much closer to white, upper-middle class, educated, and with plenty of financial opportunities" either doesn't hold true compared to the general population of the US, or isn't especially meaningful where it is true (education).

Having said all of this, individual motivation for joining the Armed Forces is difficult to track. My own choice was partly economic, but it was also informed by a family tradition of military service and the sense of patriotic duty I felt at the time (noone is immune to propaganda, and I become an adult in the era of 9/11). On different days, I might have answered a survey asking my reason for joining differently, based on how I was feeling and without any intent to deceive.

It is also worth noting that public perceptions of military service are deeply unrealistic and disconnected from the reality of military service. Only about 20% of soldiers in the US Army are in primary combat occupations (e.g., infantry, armor, artillery). The rest are in some kind of support role, like driving trucks, repairing equipment, handling paperwork, or cooking. The proportion of combat arms has been shrinking over time (source). Of course, all of these other occupations are theoretically in service of making those in combat occupations more effective and capable, but most people don't think "line cook" or "truck mechanic" when they think soldier, even though there are more of them than there are infantry. It is very easy for a recruit (like I was) to justify to themselves that because their military specialty wasn't combat focused that they weren't a part of the worst actions and policies of that military, just as it is easy for most US citizens to justify to themselves that they aren't responsible for the actions of the military despite their part in voting for and funding its policies.

TL;DR military recruiting does unequally draw from lower incomes and those that perceive a lack of other options, and many of those that join are able to justify it to themselves even if they disagree with military policies or past actions because they are separated from the immediate harms of those actions and policies and because they don't feel like they have meaningful alternatives. A society that provided the necessities (nutritious food, shelter, and health care) to all its members would have a much tougher time recruiting than the US does.

[badedramay]

I read something on twitter about how an actor's social circle plays a big role in them being considered a star in Pakistan. Like they said that actors like ahad,fawad and mahira know how to carry themselves in the public eye and are considered classy lending to their star power and how most young actors aren't from the elite class and don't have any backing either. So I have two questions can you explain who is considered elite/burger? etc in Pakistan and what role does social standing play in future of actors.

oh most definitely! see social class plays a big part in how many opportunities an individual gets in their lives. people from the privileged upper class living in one of the already few developed cities of the country will have access to the kind of options right from their foundational years that people belonging to middle / lower class people living in the underdeveloped cities would get to be aware of after they graduate high school if they are lucky enough. this already changes the starting line for the people. and even WITHIN the more developed cities the social class difference affects how an individual is groomed. for example, Mahira when she started as a VJ was already well spoken and had good communication skills owing to the kind of education she recieved. compared to someone like Sajal Aly who started in the industry very young and without having a proper education. if you'd just compare their debut years you can see the zameen aasman ka faraq in how the two carried and presented themselves.

to become a 'star' one needs to know the right people in the right places. and those places are very exclusive and hard for outsiders to get into. cuz stars are made. there's more to them than just their acting. there's a whole brand value they have which is meticulously created and perfected by an entire team working behind the scenes, often way before they even enter the industry. younger actors who come in the industry not knowing the right doors to knock have to wait for YEARS to be noticed by these 'star makers'. and there are also unfortunate cases of them falling in the hands of the 'wrong' mentors who just don't know how to make a star out of an actor. case in point Yumna Zaidi. the girl has been a brilliant actor since her debut year. it's only NOW she's being praised for being a star because it's only NOW she got to work with a team that's putting her in the right places and marketing her as more than just an actor known for doing serious dramas. i don't remember Yumna being so largely fangirled over her beauty the way I am seeing now. also I guess this ask was prompted by the Hamza vs Sehar post-Fairytale discourse happening on twt where Hamza is getting all the headlines and Sehar is just an afterthought despite both of them being headliners of the show. it's quite simple isn't it? Hamza knows the people in the right places. Sehar doesn't have that access. Hamza is able to turn the spark into a flame cuz he knows the right people to fan the spark. Sehar's spark will be extinguished with time if she doesn't get hold of the right fan.

one has to understand that in Pakistan the acting, especially the Lollywood industry, is not considered one for the "respectable" families. so forget anyone aspiring to become a star grooming themselves from early on, their first struggle is just to get the support from their families to pursue this as a career. sure times have changed now with more outsiders being able to make this a respectable career choice but the age old notions about this industry are still deeply entrenched in the minds of majority. the 'elite' class have no such notions because their social status protects them from a LOT of shit. it's all just connected. a person who has acting as a career that runs their household just will not have the same priorities as someone who doesn't have to worry about the financial aspect of it all. to become a 'star' lots has to be invested in it and it's not something an individual can afford on their own without strong backing.

Nepotism in Pakistan is rampant no matter where you look. one's parents or uncles or aunts or cousins etc will help get in a good word for someone at the right time in the right place just to get them through the door. cuz we are a very "you scratch my back I'll scratch yours" society. it's neither good nor bad, it's just how we live.